From CES: The sea is alive with cheap, powerful robots — and that will be dangerous | C4ISRNET

To walk the halls at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is to be bombarded by the most cloying vision of the future. Robots that dance in sequence! Segway inspired suitcases that walk behind harried travelers! Virtual reality goggles that show tiny imaginary battles over geodoes! Amidst the audio-visual assault of the show floor, there was a trend in consumer robotics that I think is worth following: underwater robots are here, and plentiful, and will likely only get better and cheaper in the years to come.

Undoubtedly, the cutting edge of underwater robotics will remain in the hands of nations with the money to pour into such projects. But what about the good-enough robots, the machines that may not be built to military specifications, but can do the job in a pinch? Those are the machines I saw at CES last week.